Principles of leadership for 10 or 10,000 with MAJ GEN Stephen Day DSC AM

[Music] Welcome to the Cove Podcast, your stop for PME on the go. [Music] Welcome to the Cove Podcast, I'm your host, John Hardgrave. Today we're discussing ADF Philosophical Doctrine, Leadership. A document that goes beyond processes and competency to ask a harder question. What sort of people must we be to lead well in the profession of arms? Doctrine often tells us what to do. This doctrine is a little different. It also challenges us on who we are, the character we cultivate, and the moral responsibilities that we carry as leaders entrusted to command. I'm joined by Major General Stephen Day, DSC AM, the author of the doctrine. A few snapshots from Major Days Service includes acting as a deputy operations officer of the multinational force Iraq, with an coalition of over 400,000 personnel. Chief of plans for ISAF Joint Command in Afghanistan, supporting a force of more than 100,000. Later serving as the head of cyber for defence, and the inaugural coordinator of the Australian Cybersecurity Centre. Major Day also led Australia's national drought response as a national drought coordinator, requested by the Prime Minister, responsible for a whole of government coordination during the prolonged domestic crisis in 2018. In this conversation, we'll explore why character sits the Centre of ADF Leadership. How this doctrine should shape promotion, development and command. And what are demands of leaders, especially when things are the hardest? Major General Day, welcome to the co-podcast. Good morning, John. Thank you very much. We've had a quick snapshot of some of your career as part of the introduction. You were also the commander of Sembrigade, you've also led in senior roles within the civilian world. Before we dive into the doctrine, is there any leadership experience, posting or job that stands out to you as being the most challenging and the most rewarding and what you may have learned from that that helped shape the doctrine? The most rewarding ones are easy. They're always the ones where you were commanding Australian soldiers. They're greater privilege in life and working life. From being an OEC, the CEO of the Gale Commander, wonderful experiences. The hardest by a long way was the Warner Rack. Why? The greatest competition in life is war. And we were coming second in that competition when I was there. And of all the competitions you don't want to come second in, it's that one. And we lost a lot of people. We lost around a thousand killed in the time that I was there of our mob. About four thousand wounded. And we were involved in a killing of many more thousands of our opponents. And there were a lot of innocent civilians who I see lives too. It was a tough period. With leadership, there's always learning. So despite those experience, I'm sure there's plenty of lessons that you would have learned out of that experience as well, which we can dive into as we move forward. The author of the doctrine as we've heard, what problem in ADF leadership was trying to be solved when this doctrine was written both, I guess explicitly or implicitly? But I think there was a problem that was trying to be solved. There was a change to the CDF on it. As he explained it to me, he'd asked himself the question about his responsibilities to the ADF as an institution in the appointment he had. And he said he felt that he had to make sure that there were the minimal number of institutional barriers that might hold us back from being successful on operations, specifically when we fight as a joint force and you know, fight in joy to be tough. And that's why if you're any good at joint re you're going to crew an edge against your opponents. So it's important. And one of the things he concluded was one of the institutional barriers was that the single service is all a different approach to leadership, a different understanding of leadership. And that actually created some problems. He saw them play out in his role. So he felt if we could get everyone to have a fundamentally shared understanding of leadership, how to think about it, then that would be a good thing. It would pay off in years to come. So he wanted one piece of doctrine. He wanted the single service ones to be put into the archives of history. But one that all members of the ADF were trained on from the Habanishio institutions. So you said the CDF came to you to write this doctrine. I guess the short question is why you, but was there any experiences or particular involvement that you've had that perhaps the CDF thought that you might be the best placed person to write this doctrine? Well, I think it was a center for defence leadership that made approach me initially. And having said, yeah, I'll probably have a go. The CDF, because it was a prop mine of his priorities, you know, wanted to chat to me. He and I knew each other very well. So he was very pleased, you know, that I guess I could do it. I'm sorry, I would do it. Why me? Well, I guess we'd have to ask him, they never explained that. But I had a broad experience of leadership and what an operational experience. I suspect that's why. I tell you what, I've never written a book and I don't think they asked me to do it because I knew I could write. That's fair. I guess how many edits did it take? Or we just don't go into that. I countless. Yeah, but it's a good question though, because I think it's important to understand that I didn't sort of sit in a dark room like this one and just write it and then sort of, you know, pass it out for it to be distributed. That's not, that's not how it worked. I thought actually, after having a sit-in-down chat with CDF all the way, okay, this is a privilege. And I better not muck this up. And if you get it right, it's going to be helpful for future generations. And I thought the first way, the easiest thing for me to do to muck it up was to write it myself. So I got a coalition, I called them the guiding coalition. And these were, I have picked these people, but they all, from different services. But I knew they had an interest in leadership, that a passion for it. And so I would do the drafts and then I'd give it to this guiding coalition. And they'd grow my homework. And then a lot of changes were made. And then having got out first draft, I then had to consult in a formal defence way with each of the services. But I also got around and spoke to groups of, you know, junior, do you get some case of army, bunch of sailors up at cans, for example, some air force folks out at Ambulie, just to get input. And probably, I'd lost camp, but there was something like two or three thousand different folks who were consulted, including people outside of defence, you know. So a lot of edits. One of the interesting pieces at the very start of the doctrine is, you write that the doctrine is applied, whether you're leading 10 people or 10,000 people. Did you find it difficult to, I guess, cover that breadth of leadership or other principles the same no matter what? Because a general leading an army versus a section commander, some of the leadership is going to be different. But it's the underlying principles, I guess, are the same. Did you find it difficult to write it to such a broad audience? I did find it difficult to write to such a broad audience, because it had to land with the army and air force specifically. And each of those services, I'm sure anyone listening here is never indulged in any of these cultural instincts. But, you know, for the army often, you know, it's not hard enough. For the Navy, it's a two army. And for the air force, I was too worried. And she ended up with this bit of this, you know, never ending circle, if you like. So that was sort of hard to thread your way through that. It wasn't so hard in terms of, you know, 10,000 or 10, because when CDF and I sat down, we thought about who is the audience we're writing for? And what we decided, and he agreed, was we're going to write for our young people. I say young, I mean, our junior people, people coming in early on. So section commanders, in the case of the army, junior senior NCOs, in junior officers, you know, left-tennis and captains. And we wrote it in a style that we hoped would be accessible to them. And we made sure it wasn't too long so that they wouldn't sort of give up partway through, hopefully. But to your specific question, the fundamental tools of leadership don't change. You need to be a good character. You need to be professionally competent. Now a general's competence is different from a second-commanded competence, of course. But it's a fundamental requirement of the position you're in for you to be competent. And then you need to have an understanding what makes humans tick. Those three things are the fundamentals of leadership that apply, whether you're leading 10 or 10,000. In fact, they apply whether you're leading soldiers or whether you're in a civilian organisation. What does change is the context and the culture, and you need to be able to adapt to those. There are a lot of leadership qualities that are talked about throughout the doctrine. But they're not all easy to measure. Because a lot of it is the psychology of leadership. What's hardest to measure as a quality of a leader? And therefore, I guess, it would be the hardest to reward as well. I suppose we don't as much measure those, perhaps, John as we judge them. We judge them to exist or not in a fellow human being. And sometimes you can make the judgment really early by a single act. And I think of courage, for example. When you see someone do something that is courageous, whether it's mild, you're physically going, "Okay, that person's got courage." You make that judgment. Other things I think take longer for us to make an assessment because you need to see a pattern to behave here. And I guess the integrity would be one of those. Australian soldiers have a really good bullfast detector. We know real courage when we see it. We know real integrity when we see it. And we know someone who's dishonest when we see it. So I actually think we judge those relatively evies some take longer than others to arrive at conclusion. In terms of rewards, what's your thought there? So when we talk about reward, I guess we're referring to, I was going to say, the end of year cycle when they're writing the P.A.Rs and how is that recognised by both the followers and the leaders leader? As you say, you've got that end-of-year report. You've also got the commendation system and the more formal honours in the word system. But actually, I think the most important thing is when you see one of your soldiers do the right thing, they're already courageous, for example. They've shown integrity over a long period of time, then you are zero immediate leader, should recognise it, preferably publicly. And that goes a long way for our soldiers, a simple, well-down mate, and particularly for turning front of your teammates. They both say confidence and you need confidence, I'll just, because the game can be tough when you're over-seas. The doctrine looks at placing character at the heart of leadership and not as an adjunct or confidence. So was that necessarily emphasised for a reason, was it missing or at risk? Characters are incredibly important, but so is confidence. So where do you weigh the two, and I guess looking at a leader? Well, they're quite distinct, at least in my mind they were. You can have an eel of seeing this yourself, I reckon, John, you've had a good bloke, there's burning boss, but damn, I went real good at tactics or administration, whatever else was needed professionally. And you're happy to spend time with them, but if you're in real harm's way, you probably prefer someone else. On the other side of the coin, there's quite a few folks who come across who are professionally really good, but when it comes to character, they're bumps, and you don't want to be led by them either. So the two things are important in really effective leaders. Why was it necessary to emphasise it? Well beyond that it's important. There seem to have been a drift in its emphasis. It was little mentioned in our doctrine. There was some doctrines, but it didn't have a sharp focus. And when you looked at the training in our habanitio institutions, both for soldiers and officers, if it was, if character development was part of the program, it had usually been some contract out to part raise. Now there's nothing wrong with part raise. Part raise a grade, and I need to play a role in this character development. But by having our key leaders absent from the teaching of character and its important to leaders, we were sending a subconscious message. So it was very definitely and endeavour to stop the drift away from the importance of character. We've all had leaders, I think, as you described, that might be great people, but not so great at their job in vice versa. Yeah, they are intertwined, I guess, to make a good leader. Looking at tension, I guess, sometimes between institutional loyalty and moral courage, how does your doctrine help leaders navigate those situations? There shouldn't be an inherent tension between institutional loyalty and moral courage. I mean, mostly what the institution is trying to do and asks us to do should align broadly with what we think is the right thing, mostly. Of course, sometimes it does come into conflict, so to speak. Loyalty works both ways, up and down. The way you demonstrate loyalty to your, for your team is you make sure if you're the leader, that the team's perspective, your organisation's perspective, your section's perspective on the plan or what you've been asked to do is put on the table for the boss who's the decision-maker. You need to continue putting your view until you believe that the boss actually understands what you're trying to say and that might take several goals at explaining it. But once you're satisfied that the boss understands your perspective and then makes his decision, then your responsibility is to own it and head on back down to the team and say, "Right O'Team, I know we think the right way to do this is to do a right flanking, but the boss has got a different perspective, he's got responsibilities that are different from ours and we go and left and I'll tell you what, there's no one going to do a bit of left flanking than we're going to do this time." It's very important for a lot of people to understand, I guess, the concept. If they don't already, that sometimes your plan's not the best plan and if your boss has a reason to do it, then you back that boss 100% for that institutional loyalty to go, "This is the plan and we're going to execute." I think it's important to understand that your boss has got a unique perspective. He's got a perspective that will be different from yours and he's got different responsibilities and I, by the way, he's more accountable. Respecting the boss's position is important. We've heard some talk about different styles of leadership and leadership styles can change depending on circumstances. I've often heard it said it's easy to lead in a crisis than in a business as usual, business setting. Is there a different approach to leading in crisis versus leading in the mundane day to day? Yes. I think in sort of day to day, you've got more time and so you should take that and consult more with your team. You do have two reasons. It'll end up with a better solution because it's more brains looking at the problem and actually help build trust with your team. That becomes important in a crisis. In a crisis in either battle, for example, you will have less time or maybe no time to consult. And the only time you might have is to simply say, follow me. And if you've taken the time to consult and talk with them and build trust in the less chaotic times, then they will. As a leader, especially on operations or in a high tempo environment, we often talk about the mission people self as a leadership hierarchy. At what point does neglecting the self actually start to undermine the judgment trust and the mission itself and how is a leader? Do you address that? Well, like most sort of bumper stickers that we use in the ADF, they're just guides. You know, that, and I happen to think it's a fantastic guide and you don't want to muck that order up too often. But the guide isn't saying neglect yourself. What it's saying is that when there are moments where there's competition, between the mission or the team or yourself, you need to use that priority. You know, for example, you're in battle, you've got an objective to take, but you've got unexpected fire from one of your flanks. You know that to achieve your mission, you're gonna have to break up your team, change the plan, dispatch a group to deal with that threat, and all by the way, that means you got, you know, the team in the front, smaller, there's a risk, and this mob got to do some fireman over to get somewhere, and they're at risk, but it's important for the mission. And you know, sometimes in the field, and it's happened to most of us, you don't have enough tucker for everyone. It's, well, in those circumstances, you need to make sure your team meets before you, but you can't neglect yourself for long. But in moments where you've got this competition, and you'll be okay, you know, even if you come third, so to speak, that that sort of guide really matters here. I can talk a little bit about infant self-ful. The approach I talk to take and sort of carry yourself in leadership positions. - Absolutely. We talked very briefly about Iraq at the very start of this podcast, and the role you had there, that would have been very intense, high pressure. How do you look after yourself in a role like that? What strategies did you use? - In fact, that was the role I was thinking of. It was tough. It's a set of toughs thing I've ever done. And what I found after about the first month was I was actually exhausted. And I hadn't, you know, I'd been prepared for exhaustion in training exercises, but usually, you know, on day 10 or 11 or 12, whatever it was, you're sort of packing up and going home. But I had a year there, and I knew that if I didn't change, I was actually going to be ineffective, combat ineffective. And I'll be a drag on my mates. In fact, I was already starting to be a drag on my mates. So I had a good heart, look at myself. And I spoke to some of the other folks who rent some tough jobs. And what I worked out was that, and these things are very personal, good. Good, good, good. 'Cause we're all different, but I ran this rule of two, two, six. I knew that I needed two meals a day. I needed two hours by myself to sort of write home or exercise or read a book that was miles away from the war. And I needed a six hour sleep. Now, if I compromised that, if you're not getting no problems, but if I was compromising one or two of those on a regular basis, I would start to go downhill. So that was an important guide for me. What would you say to a junior or a mid-level commander who feels that stepping back to recover risks then being seen as weak or less committed? Soldiers, I think, really only ask two things of us. They ask a lot of things, but there's really only two things that it boils down to. One, they want you to be competent, two, they want you to be honest with them. So if you're exhausted and you're at the end of your game, be honest and tell them. I respect you for it. Most of us have got a second in command or someone who can take over for that extra few hours or the time you need. I think the other thing was a bit more philosophical, but it shouldn't be too worried about what people think of you. If you worry about what people think about you, then you're going to do things that are going to be aimed at trying to influence what they think about you. That's not a good way to be a leader. You're going to do the right thing. It's called leadership, not like a ship for a reason, right? It doesn't mean you have to set out to be disliked, of course, but you just got to focus on what the right thing is. And if the right thing is, you need to keep down for six hours. If that's the issue, then you need to do that. That self-care piece, I think, is incredibly important in those high-temper environments. And thank you for sharing your story on that one. I'm sure it resonates with a lot of people. As you were discussing that, you know, you weren't the highest boss in Iraq. Every leader has a leader. So you're also a follower. So I'm going to phrase this question a bit strange, but how does being a good follower and what do you need to do as a good follower to be a good leader? Yeah, all the names of those points you made to start there, John. From the CDF down, we've all got a boss. So we better know how to follow. And mostly, the journey is, well, everyone's, every leader's journey start with being a follower. Good follow, ship is important. You need to respectfully comply with what your boss has asked of you. And we spoke about it a bit before. And there's a good reason for this, because mostly your boss will be more experienced. He's got more inputs, and he's got more accountability. You need to respect that. But being a good follower doesn't mean blind obedience. And that runs dead against our culture anyway. So when you see something you think's wrong, or you've got a better idea, then speak up. You know, your boss will appreciate it. One of the challenges, of course, is going to be about that the right way. And then, you know, you learn with experience. Most of us get a bit better with that over time. So it's not blind obedience. It's compliance with things that are morally ethically right and noncompliance when things are morally illegal, sorry, unethical and illegal. Yeah, that's a great segue into, I suppose, looking at some of the moral challenges of leadership. As in, how should leaders reconcile loyalty to their boss or the institution with moral courage when they're too come into conflict? We did speak, I think, a little while ago about there's a reason why moral courage is called courage, because it requires courage. There's no doubt about that. Because it's asking you to stand up and say or do things that, you know, you may all copy several different kinds of hell saying or doing. Some folks confuse moral courage with zealotry, though. moral courage is about saying what you believe to be right or doing what you believe to be right. And let's talk about it in the case of the institution. And I guess we've already touched on some of this. Is there an obligation to speak up? And an obligation to believe that your position has been understood. What you don't have a responsibility to do is to prosecute and force change and keep speaking up until the boss changes their mind. I mean, unless it's unlawful or unethical, that's a different issue. And then once it's clear you've been understood, then you sort of get after it. But leadership requires standing alone sometimes. And moral courage requires you always taking the path of the heart or right and avoiding the one of the easier wrong. Being entirely comfortable, being unpopular. But you've got to do the right thing. That's exactly right. The hard right of these wrongs, the common phrase it's rolled out. Well, I guess what ethical failures would worry you more today? Would it be an abuse of authority or a failure to exercise it? I know neither of those are a great outcomes, but which one I guess, how would you talk through that? Yeah, both problems. Yep, I don't know about that. I think the one that particularly goals Australian soldiers is abuse power. It gathers me. There was an outstanding American general Colin Powell. Had a sign on his disc. And it says something like, of all the qualities of those in power, restraint is the one that impresses the most. My experience, if you want to really know someone's character, give him power. That's a solemn thought actually. Because sometimes it's not so easy to get back if you did. No, no, no, no, the truth. You've talked about learning through your mistakes and we all make mistakes for talking prior to the podcast about some of mine. Learning from the mistakes and having a new founder, awareness, how would you advise, I guess, our leaders to help build their awareness? Yeah, I think the first thing I'd say, John, is if you're not making mistakes, you're probably not doing anything. Hopefully, as you get more experienced, you may list mistakes. But I mean, I still do. And I've been wearing uniform for over 40 years. How I do it, I think what's important is not how you do it, but that you make a habit of self-reflection. We all do different ways. I know some people who they call them journaling. They write in a journal, I guess, every day I say, "I couldn't do that." But what I do, they're not every week. these days, but for some decades I was pretty religious about every Friday, I was on a Friday, I would after work or wherever I was, I'd find I'd get a drink if I could, and I'd get myself away and quite spot for everyone, and I would go over what had happened that week, and I'd pick out the two or three things that hadn't gone as well as I might have, and I wasted no time in anyone else's role. I don't control how people themselves might reflect or what they had done, it was done, but I spent my entire energy on asking myself, if I had that time over again, what could have I done differently that might lead to a better outcome? And by doing that every week, I started to understand myself a bit better, and I proved week by week, month by month, year by year. What's important is not how you do it, though, it's that you make a habit of it. Is it a good practice to involve your peers, and I guess part of that review process or that building the self-awareness, or is it very much a personal thing that you need to work through yourself? Yeah, I wouldn't recommend peers as a sort of general idea, sometimes that's good. I think it very much depends on the human being. I think most of us, if we were, well, certainly I, when I think about it, whose opinions do I really, really matter to me in life, there's only handful of people. I'd go to them. The others will, yep, I've got opinions. And they're allowed to have them? Absolutely. And their opinions for a reason, they're called opinions. That's right. But the ones who you trust, you usually trust because you think they know you. And you know, I don't get to someone who's just going to be affirming and saying, "You're great," and all that. They're wonderful at times, but they aren't going to help yourself reflect. It's the ones who really are, I'm an friend who will tell you when you've missed them. That's what good mates do. They embrace you, they want the best for you, but when you're full short, they'll pull you up. You've talked about the reflection piece there, and we've talked about everyone makes mistakes. How do you not carry the burden or regret from failure? How do you work through that? I always try to do my best. I always commit having made a mistake to reviewing and learning from it. Always do my homework. Never get involved in ignoble activities. So as a young fellow, like most of us, full of testosterone, you did some stupid things. I certainly did. And what I learned from those failures was not to get involved in those ignoble activities. Fun though they might seem at the time. Always own my mistakes and own the mistakes of the team. I think it's important to lead if the team fail. That's you. That's the leader. Even if you get more senior, you might not have a direct involvement in some of the stuff, but ultimately you're the accountable person. So all your soldiers and sailors and aviators will follow you if you own your mistakes and you are accountable for the performance. It's a good segue, I guess, into leading teams. You've talked about the team having trust in you to own the mistake as part of the team. We had a leader's established trust in new teams, and often in defense it needs to be done quickly. And trust needs to be established with both the leaders and the followers. Is there any, you know, part of the doctrine that you'd like to specifically call out that addresses, "Hey, this is how you might go about that?" Yeah, there are some sections in the doctrine that talk about trust, particularly in the chapter, the leadership panel on Mission Command, this bit of a section there. But I think the first thing is to say, you're right, sometimes you've got to build trust quickly, but there's no shortcuts, unfortunately, to building trust. But when you're with a new team and you're a leader, the best way to start is you, someone to go to start, so you the leader should extend trust. Now that, that means taking a risk. Welcome to leadership. And sometimes someone's going to abuse their trust. No problems. Write that wrong. But no one even said the time. The subordinates, the soldiers will appreciate it. Okay, at least trust them, they get their try and it encourages them to get it right. I think the other element is we like our soldiers and all of us to demonstrate initiative. It's a famous Aussie tradition. The Anjacks were real good at it. We like it. People will stop using their initiative. If when they do and it fails, we as leaders use that as a chance to cascade them, to criticize. Okay, well, then don't be surprised they stop using their initiative. So it's really important, I believe, to build trust and to encourage initiative that when there is a failure to say and acknowledge it, unless they sort of ignore it, they don't go well. But you had a go, which is what I like. But let's sit down there and have a chat about, you know, if we go do this again, we do it better. You talk about initiative there, which is incredibly important and you talk about how, I guess, strains are famous for initiative. In the doctrine, you reframe it, I guess, is Discipline Initiative, which I think is an excellent term. Instead of me butchering the explanation of it, I think perhaps if you could talk through what you see Discipline Initiative is and how it applies. Yeah, thanks John. So this is really, this part of doctrine is about mission command. And one of the things that, you know, the feedback we were getting and certainly my personal experience was that there was a bit of confusion about the execution of mission command in our army. Generally, it was felt, well, if you're a boss, you just tell me what to do. And my rights and responsibilities are on how to do it. And you can bug her off. That's not your business, you're interfering with your micro-managing. And so sometimes we got folks using this freedom in an unrestrained way, if you like, and we get a disconnect between what we're trying to do and what ended up being done. So we needed to reframe people's understanding. Yeah, it's freedom, but it's not unrestrained freedom. Yes, the boss needs to articulate the what and he needs to, when he wants to give you as much freedom, if you're the one who's got to execute on choosing how to execute it. But he needs you, as you consider how you go about it to have an unblinking a discipline to focus on his intent. Use initiative, but make sure it's disciplined and it's intended to achieve the mission that your boss is giving you. You raised a very interesting concept there, the difference between mission command and leadership. They're two fundamentally different pieces and they've got their own doctrine as well. Do you want to talk through some of the fundamental differences where people might get confused between the crossover of leadership versus mission command? Yeah, you're right. So I think simply put, leadership, this is a definition we use, is the the art of positive or influencing your team to get something done. Get the mission done. There are a variety of methods you can use to achieve that. Mission command is but one of them. There are others which might help a bit. You can be really detailed. You can write, you know, even your section command, you can write a 15-page set of orders is going to be extremely prescriptive. That's not mission command, but that's another way of doing it. And in some more senior roles, let's say you've got a mission that might be low tempo, but it's a really strategically sensitive mission. Then you are going to be really prescriptive because the risk of failure is, and the consequences of that are too important. Mission command is sort of at the other end of the continuum. You give comprehensive, sorry, you give concise and the shortest amount of orders necessary for you to get on to the job. So it is a method to help you with your leadership. Leadership's such a broad spectrum and it's an art. You never stop learning it. I think if you stop learning, then you're dead in the water. The lessons you learn in leadership from the military, you've got incredible experience outside of the military and leadership positions as well. What are some of the differences and similarities of military leadership and leadership elsewhere? So when I was a major, I was posted to Malaysia for a year, and I worked under the direction of a really good Malaysian riggedeer, really impressive for [BLANK_AUDIO] noticed was when he was talking to Malaysian soldiers, he was, by our standards, quite a bit indirect but very effective and it worked with the culture, the Malaysian culture at least at that time. When he was talking to a group of us Western foreigners, he changed, he was much more direct in a way that really fed it and worked with us. What I learnt in time was the things that don't change and we've already spoken about these, be a good human character, know your job, professional competence and understand how others tick, some people call it EQ, to be more than EQ but it helps you understand it. But what does change is culture and context and you have to adapt your approach depending on the culture and your context. So over the years I've been asked by some civilian organisations and companies and things that sort of have a chat about leadership and it's not a whole lot different from what we talk about in the military. So the fundamentals are pretty consistent, culture and context change, you have to adapt and not everyone wants to. If you've spent 30 years in defence and that's all you know, are there any tips on how someone might adapt? How do they translate that skill set outside of the military back into civilian workforce? It might not be helpful but if you've spent 30 years and that's all you know you've made a mistake. You need to broaden your networks and your understanding of the world around you. It'll actually make you a better soldier too. I got lucky in my career. Very early on as a junior officer I sent to an arm reserve organisation. Now in those days not many got sent to arm reserve organisations and you know the regular guys didn't want to do that because they want to be in their regular units. But the army wanted to have better support for the reserves and it also wanted the regular army to understand the reserves better. So I worked, sent to the reserves of Young Captain and all the people around me had an extraordinary range of careers and interests and I learnt more from them in that I was only there a year I think that I had in you know the previous years I've been to the commission officer. They already learnt a lot. So that broadened me. When I was a lieutenant colonel defence wanted to better understand the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. So I was sent as the initial sort of liaison position into DFAT to you know. They asked me to do three things actually. They said try and understand how culturally DFAT thinks. Try and make some friends. Might be useful at an operations things and learn how to speak Indonesian. I probably did better at the last than the first two but anyway but it helped me broaden me. So get out there and try different stuff. Don't always be chasing army courses if there's a civilian course out there that's going to help you know the organisation and you that'll be one to chase after. I don't know where I've answered your question no John. You have and I think listening to your conversation then around when you've also talked to civilian organisations about leadership it's important to recognise I guess we have we've brushed briefly over the role of a mentor for a leader as well. Leaders still need leaders. Leaders still should learn. Can we just talk through perhaps briefly the role of a mentor for a leader. And if you're a junior leader or a senior leader the role that a mentor might play to help you become a better leader. Yeah and I think the the IDF is really maturing in this area of mentoring. It wasn't till I was a brigadier that you know it was sort of more commonly spoken about it or started to become more commonly spoken about our army so there was about 2000 and I can't remember now five something like that. The thing about mentors is it's a safe space to have difficult conversations because they're not there to that unassess you. They don't determine whether you get the next role or not. They don't write reports on you. They're there to share their wisdom. My advice and I've been a mentor and also a mentor and what I'd say to folks is the mentor or mentor relationship works best when you choose the mentor. Don't choose someone just like you though because you're not going to grow and when you actually commit to a regular pattern of catch ups it's no good meeting you know having a touch base for the mentor once a year or something that's just a sugar head that is unlikely to help you grow. So a regularity I believe is important and for you to feel comfortable talking about your failings and what worries you what you're frightened of. The areas you need to improve difficult decisions you got to make. I mean there should be no boundaries if you like but you need to get down to the real gritty stuff if you're going to grow. So you've talked about the enormous amount of leadership experience you've had mentors and mentees. A personal question for you is around who would have had the biggest influence on you in your leadership. I was a young officer. I also pulled me to one side. I had been observing my attempts at leadership over a year I guess it was an SSM. He said to me you know you do have to lead effectively in peace. He said but your acid test is in war. He said if you can when you've got a soldier who's been killed in a minefield and he's lying dead and maimed and nearby is another soldier who's frozen with fear and I don't know where they go forward or backwards. And if you can go up even though you'll be fearful yourself walk up to that soldier and say follow me then you'll be fit to lead Australian soldiers. That advice always stayed with me and he was a vet in the Amvetron and whenever I fell you know as a junior officer and a major in left-handed cool there's always the senior insiose who were there to sort of pick me up and give me guidance. So the group that has had the biggest influence on me and I believe you know they do want the majority of officers are our senior insiose to clean those early formative times. But I've also when it comes to command I've learned from some of our greats. General Murray Brite Blake I learned about courage, communal Mark Evans I learned about character, General David Hurley I learned about decision making. We've had some crackers. The relationship between the senior insiose and the junior officers I guess can't be understated we're matching experience versus I guess the academic pursuit of leadership together for the right outcome. Yeah that's right John that's a nice way to put it and I think most junior officers when you get it done turn or add for your told you know the importance of senior insiose so most of them get it. I just want senior insiose to know the other side that you are really important in shaping the behaviour the attitudes the leadership qualities of our officer cool. It's a significant responsibility. So as we come to the end of our time on the podcast if our listeners were to take away one key learning from the discussion and I acknowledge there's going to be more than one. What would you choose? What would it be? Be courageous. Got a good idea. You think there's a better solution? You think this is wrong? You want to show compassion? You believe in hope? Unless you have the courage to speak up and have your voice heard or the courage to act then all those things are just thoughts. Well thank you very much sir for appearing on the cove podcast until next time this is the cove. Thanks for listening to the cove podcast. Explore our channel for more great audio PME content also visit us at cove.armie.gov.au for hundreds of additional resources. The cove. the learning home of the Australian profession of arms.